Multiple mayhem

Last week there was a news story about teenage quadruplets born in 1990 who paid a special visit to a newborn set of quads who were born at the same hospital as the teens and as I read the advice that the teens parents gave to the new parents,I couldn't help but think of how mainstream and commonplace multiple births are now,mostly due to medical advancements and intervention."Jon & Kate plus 8",a show about a family with a set of twins AND a set of sextuplets,is one of the highest rated programs on TLC.The McConahey septuplets just celebrated their 10th birthday and were featured on the cover of a national womens magazine.

I have mixed feelings about the issue.I certainly can understand the desire to have a child and the lengths that a woman will go to in order to do so,but it's not all warm & fuzzy....The more babies there is,the higher their chances are of being premature,which in turn leads to a host of physical and developmental disabilities.Some doctors advocate "selective reduction",in other words,aborting some of the babies early in order to give one or two of them a better chance of survival-but thats not an option for alot of expectant parents,because of religious or moral beliefs.Unfortunately,because artificial insemination procedures are SO expensive and rarely covered by insurance,multiple embryos are implanted in the hopes that at least one will "take".While it would be wiser to implant just one or two,most women can only afford it once and are determined to succeed because they might not get another opportunity.So it is a very personal and complicated issue.

It used to be that multiples were rare,and while there are still the occasional set of multiples that were conceived the "old-fashioned way",for the most part the increasing multiple births are due to modern fertility medicine.I personally do not know how I would cope if I had more than one toddler but theres families that have anywhere from 3 to 7 and somehow they manage.They used to be able to get freebies from big companies but as multiples become more common,the diapers and strollers and other goodies have dried up.At least things are easier for these tots now.Back before artificial reporduction,quads and other multiples were exploited by their parents and sideshow barkers,some even being raised in circuses and traveling oddity shows like bearded ladies!We have come a long way since then.I can only recall one or two sets of twins in my high school-now there liable to be one or two in EVERY class!